Cup Runs Over With Memories

Nothing Slowed Fiesta Mexicana

July 01, 1986|By Phil Hersh, Chicago Tribune.

MEXICO CITY — Attendance figures were grossly inflated. The golden goose, TV revenues, was nearly killed during an opening week when mass communications turned into a communications mess. Three quarterfinal matches were decided with dubious justice by penalty kicks, a legal if farcical conclusion to games of such importance.

For all that, the 13th World Cup will evoke fond memories among all those who came to it with a sense of adventure. Only the most cockeyed optimist would have expected to avoid all misadventures during several weeks in Mexico, a country that properly belongs to the Third World despite having one of the oldest civilizations in the New World.

A host country--and especially its capital city--badly in need of a celebration is now left to deal with its $98 billion debt, its pollution and its poverty. The peso, obviously propped up during the month-long World Cup, has already begun to slide against the world`s major currencies. The Fiesta Mexicana, which reached riotous proportions until the Mexican team was eliminated in the quarterfinals, is over.

``It was fun,`` said a spectator, ``but now Mexicans have to wake up to the reality of the situation.``

The Mexican people, unfailingly friendly toward their visitors, deserved the surprisingly strong performance by a home team helped along by a favorable draw. Once Mexico was ousted by West Germany, the locals turned their affections to other teams with Latin panache--first Brazil, then France and finally Argentina.

The Mexicans were twice rewarded Sunday at Azteca Stadium. Their own team had a final moment in the sun, when it was introduced before the final game to deafening cheers of ``May-Hee-Co.`` Their favorite, Argentina, wound up world champion by beating West Germany 3-2 in a game that started slowly and rushed to a brilliantly emotional climax.

In the streets of Mexico City after the game, horns honked, and young and old waved flags of Argentina and Mexico, and waved goodbye to the fans who had come to the party. It was a happy farewell from those who, sadly, had been unable to get any closer to the game they loved.

Soccer`s world governing body, FIFA, announced a record attendance of 2.4 million for the 52 matches, an average of 48,298 per match. That many tickets may have been sold or given to the sponsors who lined FIFA`s pockets, but many stadiums were barely half full on game days.

The high price of tickets had prevented most Mexicans from buying them in advance as required, and there was no sensible system for distribution or sale of the leftovers. FIFA`s disdain for the general public created what an Italian journalist called ``a white World Cup in a brown country.``

The Mexican faces in the stands were nearly all fair, representing the oligarchy that dominates a country in which the overwhelming majority of people have Indian blood that has turned their skin dark. FIFA president Joao Havelange expresses great concern for the world`s children, but he could find no way to give empty seats to children like the boys who were outside Azteca Stadium before every game, kicking a ball across a sloping patch of bare turf toward goals made from old tires dug into the ground.

Those people are invisible to the hierarchy of FIFA, whose game has such universal appeal that FIFA is arguably the most important sports organization in the world--and incontestably the most self-important. Its 70-year-old president, bus company tycoon Havelange of Brazil, ironically owes his election to support of the Third World, whom he paid off by expanding the World Cup final phase from 16 to 24 teams prior to the 1982 tournament in Spain.

That FIFA lives in its own smug reality was apparent at Havelange`s press conference the night before the final game. With some $44 million in TV revenue and at least half that much in sponsorship fees safely in FIFA`s coffers, Havelange played Candide and said there was nothing wrong in this best of all possible worlds.

A prominent British journalist asked Havelange how he could explain being worried about youth while having a cigarette company as a sponsor. The sponsor, whose billboard was prominently displayed at midfield, must have been among those wincing at the answer.

``I must say I am 70, and I have never smoked,`` Havelange said. ``I have seen advertising in support of cigarettes and cigars all over the world. Advertising may or may not change human beings.``

Havelange played as fast and loose with facts as he did with ethics. Questioned about the necessity of the third-place game, which both

participants agreed was meaningless, Havelange pointed to what he said was attendance of 46,000 as justification. Only 21,000 were actually in the crowd that saw France beat Belgium at Puebla.

It was Havelange`s good fortune that the game which captivates every region of the world except North America proved, like so many sports, to rise above the beauracracy which governs it. The 1986 World Cup produced a worthy champion and highlighted a player of such style and creativity, Argentina`s Diego Maradona.

``The people of Argentina wanted this,`` Maradona said. ``I`m happy for the people of South America.``

Happiness can, of course, have a down side, as evidenced by the three deaths reported in Argentina during celebration of the victory. Less frightening, although equally mordant, was the reaction of a fan in Rome to the Italian players who returned home in national disgrace after failing to retain their 1982 title.

``Italy vomits on you,`` read the fan`s banner.

The 1990 World Cup is in Italy, where such surreal evocations are commonplace. Italy, which often acts as if it is playing a part in a Fellini movie, could make Mexico`s fiesta look like a tea party.